Kyle Busch has spoken publicly about an incident at Pocono in which he crashed after contact from Corey LaJoie. He has said that "payback" is coming for the Spire Motorsports driver.
Busch made the comments Friday afternoon during an in-studio appearance on "The Pat McAfee Show." He watched a replay of the incident that ended his day and provided his comments about how the crash unfolded.
"That's Corey to my inside and I was blocking him," Busch said while pointing at footage of the crash. "And we're already like -- one, two, three, four, five -- I'm the fifth car. I'm five-wide. And then you'll see down here at the bottom of the screen, the yellow line is coming up.
"So Corey is like, 'Well, I gotta get back on the race track. There's the yellow line.' So instead of just blending in behind me and making sure that he doesn't crash the whole field, he just clips me. That's stupid. What are we doing? We're going 190 mph into that corner and we're going to wreck each other?"
"I don't have faith in anybody because I've been wrecked in five out of the last seven races by somebody..
Our cars haven't been that great lately but we're working on it" ~ @KyleBusch #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/9e7mkpG5Dq
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 19, 2024
Busch then noted that LaJoie tried to reach out to him about the incident. There was no conversation.
"He texted me and then he called me," Busch said. "I didn't even reach back out because he changed his story four times, so I'm like, 'you're just a liar. You wrecked me.' I get it. It's fine. Whatever. Payback is coming."
Busch said that he doesn't have faith in other drivers right now because he's been wrecked "in five out of the last seven races by somebody."
The comment about changing the story references multiple interviews with LaJoie.
The Spire Motorsports driver said immediately after last weekend's race at Pocono that Busch tried to block him twice and that the second block led to the No. 8 spinning off the nose of LaJoie's car. He said that he had tried to hold his wheel straight before the contact with Busch's car.
The conversation changed when LaJoie watched replays and recorded this week's episode of his podcast, "Stacking Pennies."
LaJoie watched the in-car camera footage during the episode and provided commentary. He said that Busch was "in the chip" before the crash, meaning that he was on the rev limiter. LaJoie said that he was trying to blend back behind Busch "at the same time" the driver of the No. 8 was in the chip.
"I didn't anticipate his car losing that momentum relative to mine," LaJoie said. "I spun him out, took out several good cars behind me, which I do feel bad about on Monday."
LaJoie then appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Wednesday and said that his team has "poked and prodded him" about being more aggressive and taking runs when they come. LaJoie said that he has reached this point in his racing career by racing cleanly but that he has made a change out of necessity.
"The Cup Series does not race like that," LaJoie said. "You take all the time, no matter what. No matter if it's first lap, last lap, or any lap in between for first or for 31st. You're racing your ass off.
"So it's been a little bit of an adjustment for me to just turn up the selfishness meter."